


Dead Languages

by Ruby_fruit



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Flirting, M/M, UST, dumbfaces in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruby_fruit/pseuds/Ruby_fruit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harellan and Dorian working out how to communicate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Languages

**Author's Note:**

> utterly self indulgent bit of flirting between dorian and my inquisitor. no redeeming values whatsoever.

Dorian offers to teach him Tevene as soon as Harellan mentions Solas is helping him reverse-engineer Elvhan spells from Imperium spellbooks. As much as Harellan would like to believe Dorian just wants his company, he knows Dorian feels guilty - for all the wrong things, generally - and if Dorian thinks he can help salvage some of the damage the Imperium has done, he will. Harellan tries to make it a fair trade. He does not have a whole language to give Dorian, but he teaches him what Elvish there is to know. He’s not much of a teacher but he helps Dorian shape his mouth around it, gives him the pieces of what is left, even the bits that are guesswork.

He twists in his chair, back popping as he watches Dorian scan the shelves, lip caught between his teeth. There had been a book, Dorian said, with a bit of Elvish in it, a song or poem. A bit of rhythm might help him ‘remember your ridiculous language better,’ or at least be a relief from the endless drilling of grammar. 

_they want, you want, i want. they wanted, you wanted, i wanted._

Harellan doesn’t think Dorian has room to talk about ridiculous languages. Teven is stiff, unlovely, and they could save themselves a lot of trouble if they just put possessives into their pronouns instead of having even more words.

His Keeper, Harellan thinks, would be horrified. To give a Tevinter noble, a mage, the scraps of of their culture? Unthinkable. But had they been freer with their scraps, he thinks, they might have a few more of them. 

"Your uncle certainly named you well." He can almost hear her now. It had been her favorite fallback whenever Harellan opened his mouth and let some bit of heresy to Dalish tradition fall out. It was usually said somewhat affectionately, and after a few years Harellan stopped pointing out that his uncle was a drunken flat-ear only the halla could stand and who had never recovered from his twin sister's death in childbirth. It wasn't as though either he or the Keeper could do anything about their circumstances. Clan Lavellan was not so rich in magic, the Keeper was not so young, and the second was all of eight.

Somewhere above him the breach roils; Harellan's fingertips go numb and fire sears up his arm. All in all, he rather misses her dry disapproval of his, well, everything. It would probably sound awful to anyone else but they hadn't really hated each other. They'd just been spectacularly ill-matched.

Someday, when Cassandra is being particularly awful about the whole chosen-of-Andraste, sent-by-the-Maker horseshit, Harellan will corner her and tell her all about the time his Keeper paid an older hunter to test that Harellan's excuses for not getting married were true. The desire not to kill their only means of closing the rifts will probably keep her from stabbing him to get away.

"That is a truly awful smile, Inquisitor. What ever are you thinking about?" 

"How if Cassandra doesn't stop trying to pressgang me into Andrastism, I'm going to tell her all about the time my Keeper paid one of the older hunters to test my claim that I couldn't function with a woman and my getting married was pointless."

There is a small strangled noise above them, nearly lost amid the general rustle and squawk of the rookery. Harellan sighs. She probably would have found out eventually; that woman is very good at her job.

"You are _joking_ ," Dorian says, breathless with scandal. 

Harellan grins up at him. "Not at all. On either count." 

Dorian winces.

Harellan rubs a hand over his face, remembering. "Exactly. I nearly took a vow of chastity afterwards and I was eighteen at the time." 

"Well, that would have been a great loss." And isn't that a line from someone who has only really touched Harellan when handing him a book or peeling him off the ground after a fight. Dorian looks a bit like he rather he hadn't said it.

Harellan smiles up at him, takes a hold of Dorian's wrist and ostensibly, the book in his hand, tugs him back towards his seat. "A very great loss. Now sit, your pronunciation is still terrible."

Later, in the middle of ' _ar lasa mala revas_ ' Harellan reaches out and catches Dorian's chin, touches his thumb lightly to that scrap of hair under his bottom lip. 

"Softer," Harellan says into the sudden bright silence, Dorian staring at him with wide eyes, "You're still too hard on half your consonants." He presses with his thumb, just a little; Dorian's skin is warm and very smooth. His mouth falls open a little and Harellan drops his hand. 

They turn back to their books, nearly in sync. Harellan rubs his fingers together under the table. He hasn't wanted to kiss someone so badly since he was a boy. He has never been so unsure of his welcome, and now he's really not sure which one of them he's teasing.

Dorian’s consonants stay soft the rest of the lesson, at least.

When the candle stubs have burnt down and they are both exhausted of speaking, Dorian shelves the books precisely and Harellan stacks the teacups and sweeps the scraps of parchment he'd written what he could out on into a neat pile. The bit of Elvish in Dorian's book had been a fragment of a working song, different words than Harellan knew, but the rhythm was the same. He hums it as he works. 

"So, your Keeper actually whored a hunter out on you? You know I can't let you go without hearing that story." Dorian's voice is much closer than Harellan thought he was, and while he doesn't startle, something cool rushes down his spine and the song catches in his throat. 

Harellan turns leans back against the table. There's a smile lurking in the corners of Dorian's mouth and a little furrow between his brows. 

"It's not as horrible as you might imagine." 

Dorian arches an eloquent brow, and Harellan laughs. 

"Procreation is important to the Dalish. We're dying out. Every time the slavers come, or shems get nervous, or templars decide we've got too many mages and we lose another clan, our survival past the next few generations gets a little more unlikely."

Dorian looks a bit pale. "I had no idea things were so dire."

"Plenty of Elvhan slaves in the Imperium?" Harellan asks guilelessly.

"Ah, yes." 

Dorian looks away and Harellan waits until he makes eye contact again before he continues.

"Everyone is pressured to have kids; it's considered terribly selfish not to. It wasn't like your Imperium, at least for me - the Keeper didn't care if I fucked every man in the camp, so long as I contributed to the next generation of the people." Harellan looks away, frowns. He no longer feels particularly injured by the event, but the story still sits bitter on his tongue.

"It was fairly humiliating, and I was a spotty, self-important little brat, but Idan was very nice about it. She was clever, older. I'm pretty sure she only agreed to it because she knew it wouldn't work and the Keeper would still owe her a new bow and a skinning knife." 

"Well, who could turn that down." 

Harellan gives Dorian a sidelong look. 

Dorian shakes his head, an easy smile on his face. "I am completely sincere! I myself once dined and danced the whole night with a young woman of appropriate breeding because my mother offered me an original translation of the works of one of Nevarras finest mortalitasi.” Dorian shifts closer, crossing his arms, his smile growing into genuine amusement. “It was terrible, of course. She favored force magics and we loathed each other immediately. I still have the book, though."

Harellan smiles back at him, and Dorian’s expression softens from flippant to something more genuine and the moment stretches. They must look ridiculous, eyeing each other like halla fauns. Harellan clears his throat softly and looks away.

"Well, Idan still has the bow, or she did last I saw her. It was very nice - ironwood. She brought me a brace of birds after, as apology."

"At least you both got something out of it," Dorian says brightly, "I don't know if that girl's parents bribed her but I hope they did. I'm afraid I was very poor company, quite sulky and ungracious and we spent most of the night insulting each others’ field of magic. She was a very spirited debater, called me all sorts of names."

Dorian's eyes are bright, unshadowed, the line of his mouth easy. Harellan is happy that he is happy, that there are parts of Dorian’s family and past that can still be touched without pain.

"I enjoy your company," he says before he can think better and nearly winces. Very smooth. Subtle, even.

"Of course you do! I'm very charming, and since you don't favor brutish, dull magics," here Dorian’s eyes drop briefly to the empty hilt at Harellan's hip, "I have no cause to insult you."

Harellan is pretty sure Dorian has found just cause to insult every single one of his companions and advisors, excepting perhaps Leliana, who is of course, utterly terrifying.

Dorian has drifted closer as they talked, within reach, and Harellan could reach out and put a hand on the warm brown skin of his bare shoulder, hook two fingers into that ridiculous belt and pull him in. He wants too much to move. After a long moment, Dorian speaks.

"Well, as enjoyable as our mutual company can be, it is very late, and I'm sure you have important things to attend to, murder or politics. Perhaps both! Orlais is so delightful like that." Dorian steps away, books tucked under his arm, his expression is warm and fond, softer than usual. Harellan would happily put the entirety of Orlais to the torch.

"Do come fetch me before you do anything exciting," Dorian calls as he descends the stairs. 

Harellan calls back something affirmative, waits until Dorian's footsteps fade from hearing, and then slumps back against the table with a groan. He drops his head back between his shoulders and looks up, directly into the blue eyes of his spymaster, framed by the grey iron bottoms of bird cages and leaning comfortably on the railing. 

Harellan sighs. "Good evening, Leliana."

"Inquisitor."

"Really, if none of you call me by my name I'm going to forget it." 

Leliana smiles. "Harellan, then. Though, I think you could Ser Pavus to call you that with a little more effort."

"You're awful. I thought we were pretending you hadn't witnessed all of that."

Leliana's smile grows. Lovely, terrifying but lovely. "Oh, no, my friend, after all, a spymaster never knows what bit of knowledge might be useful."

Harellan groans and closes his eyes; above him, Leliana laughs. "If it makes you feel better, I once told a Dalish elf I was trying to court she should have come to Orlais, as Elvhan servants are so prized there."

That makes Harellan open his eyes. He stares at her, opens his mouth a few times, and can't find the words to convey what an incredibly awful thing that was to say. 

"I know. But she forgave me, after she yelled at me for a while. And she loves me still, so perhaps not all is hopeless."

"I'm surprised you approve." Harellan says, since they are being honest. 

"Of two men? What, am I such a hypocrite? Or because you are the Herald of Andraste? You are still a young man. Even in desperate times we are all people; lives do not stop because the world might." 

Harellan thinks he might love her. "You should have been born to the people - you would have made a wonderful Keeper. Much better than mine." 

Leliana actually looks a little startled. Her smile is a slow, thoughtful thing. "Thank you, Harellan. And goodnight."

"Goodnight, Leliana."


End file.
